George Leung Siu-kay, CEO of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, reveals that companies in Hong Kong are struggling with an emigration wave that has pushed turnover rates above 20%, with the loss being felt especially keenly in their middle ranks

While helping, increasing salaries alone should not be seen as a cure-all for the situation, as not every organisation can afford to battle a wage war.

For heads of departments and HR left to contend with the aftermath of staff departures, challenge assessing what's been left, what may have been taken intentional or otherwise, and how to move quickly to business as usual.

With us on PodChats for FutureCIO is Dagmawi Mulugeta, senior threat research engineer for Netskope APAC.

Dagmawi, welcome to PodChats for FutureCIO.

1.       The Great Resignation and recent tech layoffs saw people leaving their jobs voluntarily and involuntarily. What remains is the data utilised by them. Is it safe? 

2.       How can companies manage data security in the wake of employees leaving? 

3.       What kind of security threats await organisations from disgruntled employees? 

4.       The role of privacy and threat to organisations; monitoring potential leavers. Are companies breaching privacy laws through such monitoring? 

5.       What are the other challenges facing companies in the wake of mass layoffs as well as new people coming in?

Network operations teams are struggling with the rapid change in the cloud and dynamic resource orchestration, rendering older technology inadequate for troubleshooting problems. In fact, networking issues cause a large portion of IT outages, and Uptime Institute found nearly 40% of organisations that suffered outages were caused by human error.  

As organisations look for ways to improve the operation and management of their networks, advances in network management tools as well as cloud-native solution services offer heads of network infrastructure as well as CIOs with options to consider to keep networks agile, responsive and possibly easier to manage in what is now a complex, hybrid work model.

Joining us on this episode of PodChats for FutureCIO is Nick Harders, APJ Solutions Director at HPE Aruba Networking.

Nick, welcome to PodChats for FutureCIO.

1.       How complex is the corporate network today for many organisations in Asia?

2.       What are the top challenges for those responsible for network operations?

3.       Given the importance of securing the network, what is/are best practices when it comes to network operators working in tandem with the security team?

4.       Network operations and management tools have grown in sophistication over the years. What are the most recent trends in terms of the tools available to IT teams in Asia?

5.       Of these technologies you have outlined, how would CIOs evaluate the best options for their organisations given issues such as integration, interoperability, security, and management?

6.       The availability of relevant skills and experience is a real problem for CIOs in Asia. How can CIOs and HR leaders work together and separately to improve their teams are equipped with the skills they need?

7.       Lastly, what is your advice for CIOs as they look to modernise network management for the hybrid enterprise?

History tells us that the ideals of customer experience can be traced to the development of market research as a method of improving advertising in the 1920s. The practice spread to other sectors following World War II the boom of consumerism.

So nearly a hundred years has passed with much experience and an abundance of technology, we must ask: have we achieved the pinnacle of customer experience best practices? 

In this PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Ms Maxie Schmidt, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester, to shed light on Customer experience measurement – what is it and how to excel in it.

1.                   Let's start with a baseline: What is customer experience (then and now)?

2.                   What has brought about this loss of connection to the customer? Does it have to do with our greater reliance on technology? 

3.                   Among the CMOs we speak to, the term customer experience framework has now become part of the vocabulary. What is a customer experience framework?

a.       Where does this framework fit in a customer experience transformation effort?

4.                   So start with a vision, and build a framework from there, to guide your customer experience strategy. 
 You wrote in a blog that low measurement maturity is a challenge for customer experience leaders. Why do you think so?

5.                   For many marketers we speak to net promoter score seems to be the tool to use when it comes to measuring customer experience. Is this true? 

6.                   On the topic of CX measurement:

a.       How does an organisation which metrics should form part of their measurement toolsets?

b.       In your experience, do best-in-class marketing organisations have these tools and practices as part of their customer experience strategy?

c.       On average, where do most organisations struggle when it comes to executing customer measurement strategies and achieving desired customer experience strategies?

d.       How does an organisation know what best practices fit their organisation's business model?

7.                   How would the customer experience leader sell the idea of customer experience transformation to the C-suite and board?

8.                   For an organisation serious about customer experience measurement, what is the bare minimum that needs to be addressed? 

9.                Understanding that customer experience is the realm of the CMO, what can the CIO/CTO and IT team do to help support/realise the goals of customer experience?

10.               According to Forrester Research, does this cool connection between marketing, the customer experience team and IT, is it prevalent?

11.               What needs to happen to make this cool connection a reality in existing organisations? 

12.               What is your advice for the different heads that work together to achieve the desired customer experience?  

According to Forrester, a customer experience (CX) leader, is in charged of aligning the organization around customer value. From the C-suite on down, the customer experience leader needs to advance customer-centricity — evaluating experiences from the customer’s point of view. 

Forrester says this approach drives loyalty and growth. But rallying the necessary level of focus and alignment is tough, to say the least. It requires persuasiveness, adaptability, and determination to move the needle and realize your CX vision.

To help us better understand how to design experiences that drive loyalty, we are joined by Vasupradha Srinivasan, senior analyst, Forrester.

1.       Describe loyalty in the digital era.

2.       What are marketers doing to acquire this loyalty? And is the effort worth it?

3.       What constitutes great customer experience?

4.       How does customer experience drive loyalty? (is there such a thing as perpetual loyalty?)

5.       What comprises design experiences that drive loyalty?

6.       Given that customer expectations will evolve over time, is it possible to create a customer experience design architecture that is able to change with time (without having to do a massive uplift)?

7.       Recap: What is your advice for customer experience leaders on driving loyalty through customer experience?

In the meantime, however, CISOs need to acknowledge that is important to the board. This means not only showing how the cybersecurity program prevents bad things from happening. But perhaps more importantly, how cybersecurity improves the enterprise’s ability to take risks effectively. Even better, how to use cybersecurity as a competitive advantage. 

Gartner recommends CISOs get ahead of the change to promote and support cybersecurity to the board and establish a closer relationship to improve trust and support.

In this PodChats for FutureCISO, Alex Tilly, head of Threat Intelligence, APJ at Secureworks, offers his take on how CISOs can take cybersecurity to the board, and secure buy-in in the process.

1.                  Define for us what is a security culture? Why and how important is having a security culture in today's digital world? 

2.                  Who should lead the adoption of a security culture in the organisation?

3.                  Gartner predicts that by 2026, someone sitting on the board will likely have cybersecurity expertise. In the here and now, however, how would you describe the relationship between CISOs and board? Do they recognise that they need each other? 

4.                  From the CISO's perspective, can you name steps that the CISO needs to work on to build a foundational relationship with board? What works and what hasn't?

5.                  Can you share some tips for creating a board presentation agenda that will help CISO establish his or her role as a trusted and credible leader?

6.                  Conversely, what must the board do to help establish/acquire the trust of the CISO (and the rest of the executive suite)?

7.                  Advise to boards, security professionals and C-suite as regards to the cyber threat landscape in 2023 and beyond.

Digital transformation is easy to say, arguably hard to implement and failures continue to occur even as we learn from our own experiences and those of others. Why is digital transformation difficult? Some argue it is because transformation refers to a change to something that's core to the business. That it is not only about using new technologies and optimizing processes, but it encompasses all aspects of a business from the backend to the front and everything in between.

In this PodChats for FutureCIO, we will look into one aspect that is characteristic of the digital transformation of the last three years – the proliferation of the use of cloud infrastructure and the associated technologies that use it.

To help us understand this better, we are joined by Arron White, GM and VP of Sales APJ for Nutanix. 

Aaron welcome to PodChats for FutureCIO.

The findings of the 5th Annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) reveal a notable increase in the use of mixed infrastructure, which spans private IT infrastructure (both on-premises and hosted), public clouds, and edge locations. The increased diversity is driving IT pros to seek a unified place to manage and secure their applications and data.

1.       How would you compare this year's report to previous years? What stands out?

2.       Most organizations use more than one type of IT infrastructure, and nearly all agree that having a single platform to manage them all would be ideal. Q: Is a single pane of glass to manage it all even possible given the proprietary nature of how cloud is implemented?

3.       Data security and management considerations drive IT infrastructure choices. Q: Given the many choices and options for how organisations can secure and manage the infrastructure and the data, how do you see CIOs and the IT team taming this complexity?

4.       Cloud cost control ranks as a top IT management challenge. How do you contain cloud costs without adding more costs?

5.       The Enterprise Cloud Index noted that 97% of respondents have begun using open-source Kubernetes orchestration. Q: Are we seeing the end of virtual machines? Is this rise in containerisation going to lead to container sprawl? How do you bring back control while supporting business goals?

6.       Sustainability is now an IT priority. Q: Given all the different priorities from simplification, to security, and now sustainability, how do you tie this all together without losing sight of business goals?

7.       What is the overarching message 2023 Annual Enterprise Cloud Index?

PodChats for FutureCIO: How a data-driven strategy enables AIA to deliver on its customer promises 

The COVID-19 crisis continues to have a significant impact on individuals, society, businesses and the wider economy across the globe. The insurance industry has not escaped its impact, but insurers have responded quickly to the crisis. Deloitte says as the broader economy recovers and responds to the pandemic, insurers will face several challenges but also see many new opportunities in the medium to long term.

As organisations move to become more data-driven, we asked AIA Group's Abhishek Sharma, lead for Big Data Transformation at AIA Group, will share with us AIA's journey towards becoming a data-driven business.

1.                   What are some data and AI trends in the life insurance sector in Asia?

2.                   What are some new and emerging customer and business trends that require the repivot of the insurance sector?

3.                   How is AIA leveraging data as the new business driver and resource to transform the traditional life insurance sector in Asia?

4.                   What is AIA’s transformation strategy in today's economic climate and how can the approach recession-proof the business?

5.                   How has the repivot given rise to new data-driven models for the sector e.g., models leveraging AI, metaverse, gamification, blockchain etc?

6.                   What are key business metrics that support how data and AI have benefitted AIA? 

7.                   What are the considerations and challenges of setting up and integrating data-driven models at scale into AIA’s business?  

8.                   Any advice for organisations looking to transform and modernise their data strategy?

The cloud infrastructure and platform services (CIPS) market consists of standardized, highly automated offerings in which infrastructure resources such as compute, networking, and storage are complemented by integrated platform services (managed application, database, and functions as-a-service offerings).

Gartner predicts that by 2027, more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives. Industry cloud platforms enable a shift from generic solutions to platforms designed to fit the specifics of the user’s industry.

In the race to the cloud, organisations are discovering for themselves just how 'not simple' things are in the cloud. The near ease at which organisations can now connect to the cloud and acquire the resources they need to run the business also introduced new challenges including security, scalability, compatibility and interoperability, and compliance. 

And like creatures of habit, businesses want to be able to customise the cloud to suit their business objectives – further introducing complexity and additional costs.

In this PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Matthew Swinbourne, CTO Cloud Architecture for APAC at NetApp, to walk us through we can turn this growing cloud complexity into a competitive advantage

1.       How have cloud architectures changed since 2020? What is/are driving this change?

2.       When viewed from the perspective of operations and business, is there (among C-suite and operation leaders) an understanding of how this complexity will hit back on the organisation in general? 

a.       Who is best qualified to lead organisations out of this complexity?

3.       What is the role of the CTO?

4.       Why should CTOs care about how complex cloud architectures have/are become/becoming?

a.       How should CTOs work with CIOs to realise the business goals? 

5.       How can the CIO work with business and operations leaders ensure user buy-in and adoption of applications and processes?

6.       Drawing from the NetApp study on complexity, what are your recommendations given your role as CTO?

7.       How should leadership navigate the web of emerging technologies without losing sight of business goals and objectives?

8.       AI – what have we achieved so far?

9.       Single pane of glass – are we there yet?

Gartner says the endlessly expanding digital footprint of modern organizations is introducing new security challenges. The pandemic response has accelerated hybrid work and the digitalization of business processes in the cloud. 

2022 showed us what sustained big game ransomware attacks, including multiple attacks on the digital supply chain, deeply embedded vulnerabilities, and increasing attacks on identity systems, can do to vulnerable organisations. 

When coupled with the shortage of skilled security staff at all levels, in almost any part of the world, you have to ask: how did we survive 2022, and can we thrive in 2023?

In today's PodChats for FutureCISO, we are joined by Omer Grossman, global chief information officer for CyberArk, to hopefully shed light on how we can architect security for an unknown future.

1.       You recently attended the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit (2023). From your perspective what is the key learning from the Summit? 

a.       What are the top 3 concerns pre-occupying CISOs, heads of security and CIOs?

2.       In 2023, has the role of the CISO changed much? Can you identify if any – the most significant change (priority) in the role in 2023 compared to previous years?

3.       As your role at CyberArk is an internal one, how do you work with the security team and the CISO, and the rest of the C-suite, and the Board when it comes to the security of CyberArk?

4.       AI is with us now (albeit still maturing) whereas quantum computing is still 5-10 years away. How are these two technologies impacting how cybersecurity technology and practices?

5.       Is there such a thing as futureproofed cybersecurity strategy? 

A database is a collection of structured information, or data, typically stored electronically in a computer system. 

A data architecture is a framework of models, policies, rules and standards that an organization uses to manage data and its flow through the organization. Given how and where data today is created, consumed and managed, you have to wonder whether the approaches to data, data architectures and databases are still effective in today's hybrid, multi-cloud approach to doing business. 

In this PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Karthik Ranganathan, co-founder and CTO, YugabyteDB to get his view on the state of data, data architectures and databases, and more importantly, how do we futureproof our database strategies in today's complex, run-from-anywhere digital society.

1.       Define data architecture and how does it relate to an organisation's database strategy? 

a.       Where is the impact to database strategy most significantly?

2.       Given that in Asia, we will likely have a hybrid approach to how organisations choose to run their business applications – on-premises public and private cloud (with a mix of SaaS, on-premises off-the-shelf software, and in-house developed software). 

a.       And allowing for regulations on data sovereignty, how should CIOs and CTOs architect their database strategy? 

b.       What is your recommendation for a metadata management strategy where you have heterogeneous databases?

3.       How to choose the right database, and is there such a thing as one database for all use cases?

4.       For organisations that choose to be cloud-only, given that they will likely be using multiple SaaS applications – not to mention data protection strategies – what should be the approach to deciding which data architecture and database strategy to consider?

5.       The rise of democratised data is predicted to force enterprises to reinvent their data architecture frameworks. What (How) should CIOs and data architects consider as regards to their enterprise data architecture to futureproof against evolving business needs?

6.       How do you solve/provision for the lack of skills in the market today?